The Crippled God

Kindly adjusted his weapon belt. ‘The sun has cracked the sky, my dears. Time for my constitutional morning walk.’

‘Want a few bodyguards, sir?’

‘Generous offer, Captain, but I will be fine. Oh, if Raband shows up with Pores any time soon, promote the good captain. Omnipotent Overseer of the Universe should suit. Ladies.’

Watching him walk off, Faradan Sort sighed and rubbed at her face. ‘All right,’ she muttered, ‘the bastard has a point.’

‘That’s why he’s a bastard, sir.’

Sort glanced over. ‘Are you impugning a Fist’s reputation, Captain?’

Skanarow straightened. ‘Absolutely not, Fist. I was stating a fact. Fist Kindly is a bastard, sir. He was one when he was captain, lieutenant, corporal, and seven-year-old bully. Sir.’

Faradan Sort studied Skanarow for a moment. She’d taken the death of Ruthan Gudd hard, hard enough to suggest to Sort that their relationship wasn’t simply one of comrades, fellow officers. And now she was saying ‘sir’ to someone who only days before had been a fellow captain. Should I talk about it? Should I tell her it’s as uncomfortable to me as it must be to her? Is there any point? She was holding up, wasn’t she? Behaving like a damned soldier.

And then there’s Kindly. Fist Kindly, Hood help us all.

‘Constitutional,’ she said. ‘Gods below. Now, I suppose it’s time to meet my new soldiers.’

‘Regular infantry are simple folk, sir. They ain’t got that wayward streak like the marines got. Should be no trouble at all.’

‘They broke in battle, Captain.’

‘They were ordered to, sir. And that’s why they’re still alive, mostly.’

‘I’m beginning to see another reason for Kindly’s kit inspection. How many dropped their weapons, abandoned their shields?’

‘Parties have been out recovering items on the backtrail, sir.’

‘That’s not the point,’ said Sort. ‘They dropped weapons. Doing that is habit-forming. You’re saying they’ll be no trouble, Captain? Maybe not the kind you’re thinking. It’s the other kind of trouble that worries me.’

‘Understood, sir. Then we’d better shake them up.’

‘I think I’m about to become very unpleasant.’

‘A bastard?’

‘Wrong gender.’

‘Maybe so, sir, but it’s still the right word.’

If he was still. If he struggled past the fumes and dregs of the past night’s wine, and pushed away the ache in his head and sour taste on his tongue. If he held his breath, lying as one dead, in that perfect expression of surrender. Then, he could feel her. A stirring far beneath the earth’s cracked, calloused skin. The worm stirs, and you do indeed feel her, O priest. She is your gnawing guilt. She is your fevered shame, so flushing your face.

His goddess was drawing closer. A drawn out endeavour, to be sure. She had the meat of an entire world to chew through. Bones to crunch in her jaws, secrets to devour. But mountains groaned, tilting and shifting to her deep passage. Seas churned. Forests shook. The Worm of Autumn was coming. ‘Bless the falling leaves, bless the grey skies, bless this bitter wind and the beasts that sleep.’ Yes, Holy Mother, I remember the prayers, the Restiturge of Pall. ‘And the weary blood shall feed the soil, their fleshly bodies cast down into your belly. And the Dark Winds of Autumn shall rush in hunger, snatching up their loosed souls. Caverns shall moan with their voices. The dead have turned their backs on the solid earth, the stone and the touch of the sky. Bless their onward journey, from which none return. The souls are nothing of value. Only the flesh feeds the living. Only the flesh. Bless our eyes, D’rek, for they are open. Bless our eyes, D’rek, for they see.’

He rolled on to his side. Poison comes to the flesh long before the soul ever leaves it. She was the cruel measurer of time. She was the face of inevitable decay. Was he not blessing her with every day of this life he’d made?

Banaschar coughed, slowly sat up. Invisible knuckles kneaded the inside of his skull. He knew they were in there, someone’s fist trapped inside, someone wanting out. Out of my head, aye. Who can blame them?

He looked round blearily. The scene was too civilized, he concluded. Somewhat sloppy, true, sly mutters of dissolution, a certain carelessness. But not a hint of madness. Not a single whisper of horror. Normal orderliness mocked him. The tasteless air, the pallid misery of dawn soaking through the tent walls, etching the silhouettes of insects: every detail howled its mundane truth.

But so many died. Only five days ago. Six. Six, now. I can still hear them. Pain, fury, all those fierce utterances of despair. If I step outside this morning, I should see them still. Those marines. Those heavies. Swarming against the face of the enemy’s advance, but these hornets were fighting a losing battle — they’d met something nastier than them, and one by one they were crushed down, smeared into the earth.

And the Khundryl. Gods below, the poor Burned Tears.

Too civilized, this scene — the heaps of clothing, the dusty jugs lying abandoned and empty on the ground, the tramped-down grasses struggling in the absence of the sun’s clear streams. Would light’s life ever return, or were these grasses doomed now to wither and die? Each blade knew not. For now, there was nothing to do but suffer.

‘Be easy,’ he muttered, ‘we move on. You will recover your free ways. You will feel the wind’s breath again. I promise.’ Ah, Holy Mother, are these your words of comfort? Light returns. Be patient, its sweet kiss draws ever nearer. A new day. Be still, frail one.

Banaschar snorted, and set about seeking out a jug with something left in it.

Five Khundryl warriors stood before Dead Hedge. They looked lost, and yet determined, if such a thing was possible, and the Bridgeburner wasn’t sure it was. They had difficulty meeting his eyes, yet held their ground. ‘What in Hood’s name am I supposed to do with you?’

He glanced back over a shoulder. His two new sergeants were coming up behind him, other soldiers gathering behind them. Both women looked like bags overstuffed with bad memories. Their faces were sickly grey, as if they’d forgotten all of life’s pleasures, as if they’d seen the other side. But lasses, it’s not so bad, it’s just the getting there that stinks.

‘Commander?’ Sweetlard enquired, nodding to the Khundryl.

‘They’re volunteering to join up,’ said Hedge, scowling. ‘Cashiered outa the Burned Tears, or something like that.’ He faced the five men again. ‘I’d wager Gall will call this treason and come for your heads.’

The eldest of the warriors, his face almost black with tear tattoos, seemed to hunch lower beneath his broad, sloping shoulders. ‘Gall Inshikalan’s soul is dead. All his children died in the charge. He sees only the past. The Khundryl Burned Tears are no more.’ He gestured at his companions. ‘Yet we would fight on.’

‘Why not the Bonehunters?’ Hedge asked.

‘Fist Kindly refused us.’

Another warrior growled and said, ‘He called us savages. And cowards.’

‘Cowards?’ Hedge’s scowl deepened. ‘You were in that charge?’

‘We were.’

‘And you would fight on? What’s cowardly about that?’

The eldest one said, ‘He sought to shame us back to our people — but we are destroyed. We kneel in Coltaine’s shadow, broken by failure.’

‘You’re saying all the others will just … fade away?’

The man shrugged.

Alchemist Bavedict spoke behind Hedge. ‘Commander, we took us a few losses. These warriors are veterans. And survivors.’

Hedge looked round again, studied the Letherii. ‘Aren’t we all,’ he said.

Bavedict nodded.

Sighing, Hedge faced the warriors once more. He nodded at the spokesman. ‘Your name?’

‘Berrach. These are my sons. Sleg, Gent, Pahvral and Rayez.’